''The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities'' is a 1998 book by American philosopher and mathematician
William A. Dembski
William Albert Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the ...
, a proponent of
intelligent design
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for its bold attempt to ...
, which sets out to establish approaches by which evidence of intelligent agency could be inferred in natural and social situations. In the book he distinguishes between 3 general modes of competing explanations in order of priority: regularity, chance, and design. The processes in which regularity, chance, and design are ruled out one by one until one remains as a reasonable and sufficient explanation for an event, are what he calls an "explanatory filter". It is a method that tries to eliminate competing explanations in a systematic fashion including when a highly improbable event conforms to a discernible pattern that is given independently of the event itself. This pattern is Dembski's concept of
specified complexity
Specified complexity is a creationist argument introduced by William Dembski, used by advocates to promote the pseudoscience of intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept can formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both ...
. Throughout the book he uses diverse examples such as detectability of spontaneous generation and occurrence of natural phenomena and cases of deceit like ballot rigging, plagiarism, falsification of data, etc.
The filter states that if the thing being examined cannot be explained by regularity, and if it is too statistically unlikely to be explained by chance, and contains "an independently given pattern", then it may be attributed to design. Dembski says his concept is useful to those concerned with detecting design in different fields: forensic scientists, detectives, insurance fraud investigators, cryptographers, and SETI investigators, as well theologians and others who argue for the concepts of the
fine-tuned universe
The characterization of the universe as finely tuned suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that the observed values are, for some reason, improbable. If ...
and the
Anthropic Principle
The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that there is a restrictive lower bound on how statistically probable our observations of the universe are, beca ...
.
Reception
''The Design Inference'' is specifically mentioned in the
Wedge Strategy
The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the ...
as an example of accomplishing one of the
intelligent design movement
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific Article available froUniversiteit Gent/ref> idea of intelligent design (ID), which ...
's five year goals of "Thirty published books on design and its cultural implications (sex, gender issues, medicine, law, and religion). Described by the Discovery Institute as offering "a powerful alternative
o Darwinism" the book is touted as being "published by major secular university publishers."
Some scientists from the
SETI Institute
The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...
and other fields, argue that they do not find application for Dembski's explanatory filter and the related concept of specified complexity, but rather base their work upon more prosaic methods and (in the case of SETI) a search for artificial simplicity.
In 2000, biologist
Massimo Pigliucci
Massimo Pigliucci (; born January 16, 1964) is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, former co-host of the '' Rationally Speaking Podcast'', and former editor in chief for the online magazine ''Scientia Salon''. He is a critic o ...
criticized ''The Design Inference'' in ''
BioScience
''BioScience'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. It was established in 1964 and was preceded by the ''AIBS Bulletin'' (1951–19 ...
'' writing, "Too bad he missed the solution to this riddle, which has been proposed several times during the last few centuries, most prominently (and in various fashions) by Hume (1779), Darwin (1859), and Jacques Monod (1971). According to these thinkers, if a given phenomenon occurs with low probability and also conforms to a pre-specified pattern, then there are two possible conclusions: intelligent design (this concept is synonymous with human intervention) or necessity, which can be caused by a nonrandom, deterministic force such as natural selection." Pigliucci wrote "Unfortunately, Cambridge University Press has offered a respectable platform for Dembski to mount his attack on 'materialist science'--which, of course, includes evolution. My hope is that scientists will not dismiss this book as just another craze originating in the intellectual backwaters of America. Neocreationism should be a call to arms for the science community. The battle is already raging, and scientists and educators are still not sure if they should even bother paying attention."
Marine biologist
Wesley R. Elsberry and critic of creationism reviewed the book in 1999. Elsberry described the book as "...a slim and scholarly volume, as one expects from a distinguished academic press
ith
The Ith () is a ridge in Germany's Central Uplands which is up to 439 m high. It lies about 40 km southwest of Hanover and, at 22 kilometres, is the longest line of crags in North Germany.
Geography
Location
The Ith is immediatel ...
clear writing, illustrative examples, and cogent argumentation. The work, though, is motivated and informed by an anti-evolutionary impulse, and its flaws appear to follow from the need to achieve an anti-evolutionary aim. The anti-evolutionary bent is not as overt here, though, as it is in other works by Dembski". Elsberry criticizes the book for using a definition of "design" as what is left over after chance and regularity have been eliminated, and for using an argument that excludes
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...
''
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
'' in order to conclude the existence of a designer when in fact natural selection fits Dembski's argument just as easily. Elsberry concludes:
References
External links
''The Design Inference''– Dembski's website
How Not to Detect Design (pdf file)by
Branden Fitelson
Branden Fitelson (; born August 17, 1969) is an American philosopher and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University.
He is known for his expertise on formal epistemology and philosophy of science.
Bibliography
* Edward ...
, Christopher Stephens and Elliott Sober.
*
Dembski's reply to Fitelsonby John S. Wilkins and Wesley R. Elsberry.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Design Inference, The
1998 non-fiction books
Books by William A. Dembski
Cambridge University Press books
English-language books
Intelligent design books